Light GA aircraft rarely can carry enough weight in different places ( if you abide by the payload limitations) to change the Weight or CG enough to have an AOA gauge make much of a difference in the air speed you fly.

That is my take on it.

The people that get in trouble overload the aircraft or can't fly airspeed or do stupid stuff like aerobatics in a non-aerobatic aircraft

I'd rather have an AOA gauge than an airspeed gauge.  The wing only cares about alpha.

This.

I flew with Navy Aircraft acceptance pilot who basically taught me how to fly AoA. I still don't know how its not mandatory equipment in all 12.5K+ aircraft.

The original design for the L1011 was an airspeed selector, and a AOA gauge. Just a tiny airspeed indicator.

dude, that is what the stick shaker is for. It is the AOA gauge.

Mach sez...

Fuck your FOQA event, bitch! I'm calling the fucking plays, here! FUCK. YOUR. FOQA. EVENT!

FOQA analyst, get your fucking cleats on and come out here. I want to drop my Detroit overnight into open time!

Stick shakers break.  They also can't tell you max e or max r.

"That, to me, is a stupid instrument. It tells you what your angle of attack is. If you don't know, you shouldn't be flying."  - Gen Chuck Yeager

This viewpoint always humored me. It goes to show just how myopic the man could be. I enjoyed the AOA indicator when I flew Lears. But, then again, I've never felt like I've suffered without one in every other plane I've flown. I certainly wouldn't prefer one over an airspeed indicator. Knowing airspeed is useful for more regimes then just final approach and maneuvering speed. I still have barber pole, flap, and gear limitations to respect. But A/S and AOA together makes for a well informed pilot.

They're neat.   I don't really pay much attention to the ASI on final anymore - I look for two green bars on my display.  

I think it's more useful on something like an RV, where the 23013 airfoil doesn't give a lot of warning prior to the stall.   A very slight buffet about 1-2 kts before it lets go.

You can hear the audio as a tone that beeps more quickly as you approach the critical (stall) AoA - when it's a solid tone, it's right on the edge of a stall.    It's pretty apparent here at about 0:21 and 0:30 or so.

Last year I had a USMC pilot show me how to use the AOA. Academically I understood how it worked but I had never correlated it.

Now when I have to take the Lear someplace short I can fly it like a bushplane.

I took a a 31A into Meigs once.  The AOA was handy.  About the only thing that could have been better would have been the PIP on a HUD.

Fly with one every day, but nobody looks at it much.  It is useful in the check ride/training scenario where they fail all three ASI at the same time.    In an Airfrance or taped static port situation, it would be good to have.    

It's another nice toy, but we never fly close enough to the ragged edge to make it useful.

Our chief pilot is an old naval aviator, used to fly A-7's in the 'late unpleasantness'.  He flies solely AoA.
Our jets have analogue AoA gauges on the panel, but the old ones had it on the glareshield as well.  The new ones have it as a doughnut on the PFD.

They don't really touch on it at SimuFlite, but learning to fly the AoA during approach and landing has made me a much more capable jet pilot.  You can hold Vref with much greater precision and have a perfect approach and landing every time.  Now it's religious to me.

The Falcon 50 was equipped with this, you coul fly it all the way to the ground dead on Vref

Keep it between the shaker and the clacker

2 main reasons (I'm not any professional pilot):

1. This is especially true for singles, the prop wash screws up the reading
   
   Many people confuse the AOA sensor with having a cockpit readout when in reality the actual sensors' (the one that sits on the nose) main function is to give information of the flying condition of the aircraft to the  onboard computer, not the pilot. The cockpit readout like the tach in a vehicle is just a nice little bonus with little practical value

A good analogy would be the Tach on your car, nobody actually looks at it while sport driving, you can shift just by "the feel" of the engine, but it does send signal to the rev limiter so you don't over rev the engine.  Also many lower end vehicles don't have a tachometer because it really isn't needed.

In my opinion any pilot who is relying on an AOA readout while flying low and slow is asking for trouble hanging on the prop like that. Now on a high performance fighter it might be a different story if you're pulling high +G turn while trying to avoid a high speed stall but i have zero knowledge there.

They don't have to put the AOA probe on the nose, they can put them on the wing.

If flying a to b and you don't care about fuel economy or stall then there is no need, otherwise a properly installed AOA gauge/probe is a very good tool.  The wing only cares about AOA.  So if you want to fly at max range to save fuel then you can fly at the AOA the gives max range, this is mostly a constant regardless of weight, your speed will change with fuel burn but AOA constant as the wing only cares about AOA.  If the weather sucks and you want to hold at max endurance there is a max endurance AOA and again mostly constant, again the max e speed will vary with fuel burn but AOA constant.  Now suppose you run out of gas, there is a best glide  AOA.  Or you finally get to land, best approach AOA that doesn't vary with weight.  Every regieme of flight corresponds with an AOA.  With fighters max turn rate and min radius stuff you need speed and g, but AOA can be referenced once slow you live on the AOA.  

If you are low slow in a prop with AOa you will know how close you are to stall.  If low and slow without it you will be doing math or have to memorize speed weight combinations.  One AOA for stall, easy to remember.

Also, in my drag car I do shift at a specific rpm not just feel, otherwise I blow the motor or end up loosing a bit of advantage.

Whenever I had a car with a manual and a tach., I read the tach for the first six months I had the car so I learned exactly what the engine was doing at what feeling and what noise. I stopped worrying about it after I put the car through its paces and learned it, but even then I kept an eye on it because I knew that if performance changed, something needed service.

I never had an AOA indicator, but all I flew was SEP. Had it been there, I would have learned how it reacted to control inputs.

Derp.

Most (actually all, but I haven't seen very many, maybe 10) AoA gauge installations I've seen on SE aircraft have the probe (or probes, often there are two) mounted on the top of the wing, outboard of the prop where they won't be affected by the propeller slipstream.  I agree that one mounted on the fuselage aft of the prop wouldn't be very good.

Pretty much everything else you said is bollocks though.  Hope you don't take offense, but in all aircraft, you fly by the numbers.  It's especially true in high performance airplanes and jets, since they're far less forgiving, but even in a Cessna 182, you need to fly the numbers, relying on the gauges.  If Vx is 65 kts, and you're in mountainous terrain needing to maintain a climb gradient, you better have the airspeed pegged on 65 knots, not flying by 'feel'.  If you're coming into a short grass strip with trees on both ends, and are lucky enough to have an AoA installed, you need to be at Vref on final, not some wishy-washy speed range that 'feels' good.  

'Relying' on the AoA (assuming your installation is proper, which any certified instrument should be) when in slow flight is the absolute best thing you can do, because the AoA shows where the wing is actually at, live.  It's not an airspeed indicator, where you're targeting a speed you've pulled out of the book or calculated for your gross weight, which could be off by a good range if you make a pencil error (or the density altitude is high, etc), but the actual true status of the wing at that exact moment.

I reference the AoA on final, after cross-checking it with the airspeed indicators during the approach to make sure it's 'good'.  During maneuvering for final (such as a circle-to-land approach) it's a lifesaving tool, since you can watch it swing during your turn, making sure it stays well out of the yellow as you load up the wing.  In climb, I can easily see if I'm doing best lift-over-drag (or faster), and make corrections as I get higher and performance decreases in the FL400's.  Obviously I don't want to be climbing at less than LDA, since then I'm throwing performance away to generate drag.

What 'on-board computer' does your aircraft have that references AoA?  The only thing on any of mine that the AoA vane feeds into, except for the gauges (analogue and 'doughnut' on the PFD's on the Collins ProLine 21, or a very nice glareshield-mounted gauge and a wonderfully implemented PFD readout on the older Honeywell GNS-XLS aircraft) is the stick-shaker.  Honestly curious, I'm sure that Airbus and other fly-by-wire aircraft whose manufacturers have totally jumped the shark have fully incorporated the AoA(s) into their systems, but it doesn't sound like you're flying one of those.  Neither am I, of course, and glad of it!  

AoA was critical when I was flying F-4s. You always cross referenced it with air speed, but AoA was primary for landing. I would like to get Chuck's opinion of AoA if he was regularly practicing to land on a boat.

Well I'll say I don't like the quote either, and what how he flew and what he did doesn't apply to 99.9%.

I had a non- event last month.

FO took off out of LGA and wanted the slats up during the turn. So I put them up.

at 20 degrees of bank and well below maneuver speed, I told him to lessen the bank and said " feel that very slight tickle vibration on the wing, that is what it feels like just before the stick shaker, so lets make sure we have no more than 15 degrees of bank until we get clean speed or next time leave the slats out if you want 25 degrees of bank.

You don't need an AOA guage if you are paying attention.

Wish we had one though.

While I agree you should know your jet, it is not just stall it helps with.  In most cockpits you have more than enough info for every regieme of flight.  

But why put them up when he asked rather than say "wait until min man?"

We put them up all the time and limit bank angle to 15 degrees.

or we leave them out and use 25.

personal preference or dictated by the departure if it is a tight turn.

This was a personal preference time.

Same could be said for pretty much every instrument in the cockpit.
Having and flying the AoA gives you a margin of safety that can keep you alive on days where your 'feeling' isn't 100%.  Or days when it is, but you're loaded up with other tasks.  
That's my point.  I agree with yours completely, they're congruent opinions.  

Out of curiosity, what are you flying that doesn't have an AoA?

Pulling the slats early when the FP called for them sounds like "teaching moment" that can quickly slide off course. I'd never let an inexperienced pilot approach shaker on a revenue flight.

I have a mentor who is a DPE and major captain that the first time I met him (IFR ride) told me one of the most sage things I've ever heard: "I don't need to prove to you that I know more than you do. It's my job to know more than you do."  The best teachers instruct from the ground up, not from the top down.

When used properly the AOA is a huge safety enhancer.  It's as close to a pure flight instrument as you can get.

MD-80 Scourge of the Sky.

I bet you never flew the MD-80. Clean speed is typically around 250. So between flaps up and clean speed we don't exceed 15 degrees of bank.

at 15 degrees of bank after takeoff we retract the slats all the time and stay at 15 degrees until clean speed. It was not retracting the slats early. It is SOP, unless the departure requires a tighter turn, like in a tight turn on an RNAV, then we leave them out until after the turn.

It takes exactly 0.2 secs for the other guy to increase the angle past 15. I promptly put pressure on the yoke the other way and told him to roll back to 15 and he did. Then I talked about the burble. The teaching moment was not done on purpose. And by the way, he never felt it.

You are correct that I've never flown a MD-80 which doesn't hurt my feelings. I'll bet you've never flown a Sopwith Camel. The type of aircraft is immaterial to the point I was making.

By your own words you brought in your slats before returning to 15deg of bank, that is "early" or "before reaching an appropriate bank angle on departure".  The point I was trying to politely make is: "don't show your junior pilot how cool you are."  If he's flying a MD-anything he had a Farrah Faucet poster on his wall and probably isn't all that junior.

I used to sweat during partial panel stall recovery under the hood. I would fly partial about an hour under the hood, just plane tiring. Then we would finish with stall recovery I always thought you could feel, but your body plays tricks on you, the instruments will tell you and you have to fight it. I was dripping with sweat

Nope.

Slat retraction speed is routinely 50 knots below maneuver speed and after slat retraction speed, we need to maintain a max bank angle of 15 degrees until clean speed. Like I said, he went to 20 degrees after the slats were retracted.

Like I said, it is Standard Operating Procedure and slat retraction speed is 50 knots below being able to turn with greater than 15 degrees of bank

You are just unfamiliar with the piece of shit they call the MD-80

Understood.  Was this the LGA 4 or whatever they're up to now with the turn to 180 off of 13 then a turn to 040 not to exceed 210 knots blah blah blah?

Yep

Overkill on anything where whatever profile airspeed isn't going to deviate greatly with weight, landing on an aircraft carrier, or max performing the airplane i.e. fighters where you can pull AoA greater than maximum lift if you're being sloppy.

Disagree, it can tell you more about your wing than any other instrument or combination of instruments.

Exactly the point of this thread.  This guy missed it.

Sorry, but you're wrong. I wouldn't trade my AOA for anything other than 2000 extra feet of runway.

Don't need to know about the wing.

If airliners needed AOA, people would be crashing them for lack of it.

But they aren't. ( Air France doesn't count unless you are talking about a completely independent AOA system and then the cheaper solution would be to not fly Airbus. )

The only thing you need AOA for is to know where to unload to for max acceleration when somebody ( besides the FO ) is trying to kill you.

Even with complete automation and fly by wire the wing still operates at an AOA and could care less about anything else.  Is it needed?  Nope, you can publish numbers and lookup tables for approach speed, stall speed, max endurance, max range, best glide, best climb, etc.  Memorize airspeed and weights, pilots for years have done this.  Or we fly well within the margins of safety and not worry about it.  Another option is an AOA gauge, it will do all of that.  You still need airspeed for sequencing and fuel as that is important as well; I am not saying to replace them but if folks flew AOA and knew what it did folks would know the performance of the wing throughout the flight envelope.  Will it prevent stuipd?  No, but it could keep people out of bad places and make flying easier.  And none of that was specific to fighters, there a couple more things you could add to the list for fighters.

If it were cost effective to install they'd have done it already. I'd probably enjoy having one but it wouldn't be me paying for it. So we go without. And miraculously we still don't crash airplanes. Guess we don't need it after all.

What airline on the planet does things because they are cost effective.

They do things because they are told to by the Feds. The Feds do things when they run out of every option for inaction.

If cost effective was the standard, all of our cockpits would look like a DC-3. Instrument comparitors, third attitude instruments, etc.

What was the last major accident that would've been prevented by an AOA gauge and where pilot incompetence wasn't so severe that they wouldn't have misinterpreted or ignored it's information too? My air line hasn't had a fatal accident in over 30 years. Clearly they have no need for an AOA gauge in order to fly safely. Might be nice for the shits and giggles but not worth the price tag. The feds agree.

No one is arguing that it's required or should be mandatory.  The whole point is that an AoA increases the margin of safety, enhances situational awareness with regards to the flight envelope, and provides valuable information, perhaps in a better format than even the airspeed indicator.

You guys sound like the first old timer that I showed my Garmin 196 to.  "I don't need that GPS shit, I can do everything I need to with one VOR and a compass!"  Well, yes, you can, but having a GPS as well sure helps situational awareness, navigational accuracy, and is a wonderful tool.

I'm not a good enough pilot to start discounting instruments because they're "unnecessary".  I use all the tools in my toolbox (cockpit) that are available to me.  AoA is one that's incredibly valuable.  It may not be vital (unless you're landing on a carrier!) but it's damn sure useful.  Think about a situation like the Gimli Glider.  The FO had to calculate best glide at their present weight, and did a damn fine job, getting within a couple knots.  If he'd had an AoA in front of him he could have flown it instantly.

It's not vital.  I've flown lots of aircraft without it just fine.  But having one is sure nice!

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Maybe the AoA would have helped, maybe not.  By that I mean, would it even have been working at that point?  What bus would have powered it, and what busses were left after the double engine failure?

Case in point - the HS-125.  AoA is powered by XS1 bus, and if you have a double engine failure or a double generator failure (and don't have the APU running) you won't have the AoA - in fact seeing as how it's AC powered it will die when it loses power so if you don't know it's dead you'll look at it and could be using an unpowered instrument giving you completely wrong information.

My .02 is that if you are going to have an AoA it should at least be powered when you really need the damn thing!!!

Airplanes crash, and will always crash.  No one is mandating that AOA gauges are mandatory.  We could probably fly with almost nothing now.  There has been a bit of push back on automation and autopilot as pilots are loosing flying skills.  While the AOA gauge has not been a standard except on naval aircraft, it is one of the most basic performance instruments for aircraft.  If folks grew up flying AOA and understanding what it was I'd argue we'd all be better for it.  I don't think we'd see an accident rate decrease in domestic airliners by adding AOA gauges; however if we would have had a fundamental change to how we teach people to fly many years ago I bet the accident rate would be lower today.  If we changed things today on how we taught people to fly it might affect the future.  I doubt it would affect the domestic airline accident rate, but maybe GA.

If I were building/designing an airplane it would have an AOA gauge with quadruple redundancy; it wouldn't fail (or at least be built not to fail).

That's a very good point.  On the Citations I fly, the AoA and AoA heater go away when you're on EMER power.  The good thing is when unpowered, the needle stows (back to 1.0) so there's no chance of a false indication.
I agree with your two cents though.  It should be on the EMER bus.

The standard has been set.  And it is not high.

uhm last Iooked which was 5 weeks ago we have instrument comparators and a third attitude reference.